Failed Opportunity Quotes & Sayings

We did everything we could to win this game on a tricky pitch. We created a lot of opportunities but between the posts and Bonano, we failed to find the goal. We did well but we let a victory slip from our grasp. I still think we are carrying on where we left off last season and you saw a team that was working for 90 minutes. We showed off our talent but just couldn't get a goal. — Frank Rijkaard

I want, freshman Senator Gale McGee wrote to Johnson, to take time to convey to you my deep personal appreciation for the committee assignments. Because of these appointments we freshmen have no alibis if by the end of this session we have failed to produce - in other days I suspect freshmen Senators have been able to excuse their early actions by the heavy hand of the old seniority system - but not now. Your action has given to us both individually and collectively both the responsibility and opportunity — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Volatile expressions of anger and hostility combined with a tendency to blame others often result from feeling shame ... If you are shame-prone, any accusation directed at you, regardless of how mildly it may be delivered, has the potential to make you feel that you have failed or that you are inadequate. Rather than simply admit wrongdoing, you get angry and accusatory in order to hold yourself blameless. Using anger or hostility for self-protection hides your vulnerability and needs. Unfortunately, since most people are repelled by an angry response, this method may be effective.
Your anger may drive away the very people who should know your real feelings, and it may deprive you of the opportunity to allow others to be aware of your needs. Behaving in an offensive or frightening way toward others can cause them to retreat out of fear. But, actually, the fear is your own, which you have turned against someone else in the form of anger. — Mary C. Lamia

It's not all been rosy; I've had difficult situations where I've failed. But when you fail you learn a lot about yourself and come back stronger. The message is: life need not have limits. Having an opportunity in life is important but what defines you is what you do with that opportunity. — Richard Whitehead

Liberalism had come to mean spending more on everything-speech police, failed poverty programs that reward dependence, a bigger nanny state telling us we cannot eat fatty foods, workplace roles that stifle opportunity, and absurd environmental regulations. — John Stossel

Iran ... has failed to take the opportunity to demonstrate that its nuclear program is peaceful ... time is not unlimited. — Barack Obama

Athletes train 15 years for 15 seconds of performance. Ask them if they got lucky. Ask an athlete how he feels after a good workout. He will tell you that he feels spent. If he doesn't feel that way, it means he hasn't worked out to his maximum ability.
Losers think life is unfair. They think only of their bad breaks. They don't consider that the person who is prepared and playing well still got the same bad breaks but overcame them. That is the difference. His threshold for tolerating pain becomes higher because in the end he is not training so much for the game but for his character. Alexander Graham Bell was desperately trying to invent a hearing aid for his partially deaf wife. He failed at inventing a hearing aid but in the process discovered the principles of the telephone. You wouldn't call someone like that lucky, would you?Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Without effort and preparation, lucky coincidences don't happen. — Shiv Khera

Students should not feel as if they had missed the boat if they failed examinations and should be presented with more opportunities to further their studies. — Joseph Muscat

We must now view our problems as opportunities - historic opportunities to change the failed systems of the past and do what's right for our future. — Bob Riley

He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed. — William James

In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself. — Arthur Conan Doyle

On a personal level, one of the main reasons I had wanted to cross Antarctica alone was to find out where my limits lay. If I failed because I had found those limits by being unable to continue for mental or physical reasons I would, at least, be returning home with some kind of answer. To fail because I had run out of time was a failure by logistics and as such, answered nothing. I would be left with the same question I had arrived with and that would be the bitter pill, the true failure. I couldn't imagine ever wanting to repeat this journey and so the question would likely always remain unanswered. This was my one and only opportunity and it would be wasted. — Felicity Aston

The trials God allows us to go through are for our own good in the long run. It may not seem like it at the moment but with every test there is an opportunity for a testimony. Also, look at God as a teacher. He allows us to retake tests over and over again, no matter how many times we've failed before. We always have a chance to finally pass. Just know the test is not going anywhere and you can't move forward until you actually do what is necessary to pass it. — Stephan Labossiere

The reality of the Life Review is becoming part of our every day understanding. We know that after death, we have to look at our lives again; and we're going to agonize over every missed opportunity, over every case in which we failed to act. This knowledge is contributing to our determination to pursue every intuitive image that comes to mind, and keep it firmly in awareness. We're living life in a more deliberate way. We don't want to miss a single important event. We don't want the pain of looking back later and realizing that we blew it, that we failed to make the right decisions. — James Redfield

So if I decide to leap for The Fountain when I finish this memo, I want to make one thing perfectly clear - I would genuinely love to make that leap, and if I don't I will always consider it a mistake and a failed opportunity, one of the very few serious mistakes of my First Life that is now ending. — Hunter S. Thompson

A warrior of light, once he has done his duty and transformed his intention into gesture, need fear nothing else: he has done what he should have done. He did not allow himself to be paralysed by fear. Even if the arrow failed to hit the target, he will have another opportunity, because he did not give in to cowardice. — Paulo Coelho

I have only a very brief opening statement.

I welcome these hearings because of the opportunity that they provide to the American people to better understand why the tragedy of 9/11 happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurance.

I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11.

To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed.

And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out -- for your understanding and for your forgiveness.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I'll be glad to take your questions. — Richard A. Clarke

The greatest lesson for democracies to learn is for the majority to give to the minority a full, free opportunity to present their side of the case, and then for the minority, having failed to win a majority to their views, gracefully to submit and to recognize the action as that of the entire organization, and cheerfully to assist in carrying it out until they can secure its repeal. — Henry Martyn Robert

From the takeover of Detroit and the failed stimulus packages to the enactment of Obamacare, the president and congressional Democrats chose to use Americas economic crisis as an excuse to expand government rather than as an opportunity to responsibly shrink it. — Jeb Hensarling

The strewn and tangled wreckage that litters our lives is the precious raw material from which great beginnings are forged. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

There is no sign, not one sign, that the Iraqi regime has any intent to comply fully with the terms of Resolution 1441, just as it has failed to comply with previous U.N. Security Council resolutions. The international community gave Iraq one final opportunity to disarm peacefully, and that opportunity has run its course. Dr. Blix [Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector] told us on Monday that there has been no progress toward credible, verifiable disarmament. — Richard Armitage

Learn from this mistake, for a mistake it was. You failed. The next time you have an opportunity for happiness, you must take it. — James Maxwell

If you have a large bloc of Americans who believe you're trying to keep their ... fellow Hispanics down and deprive them of an opportunity, obviously that's going to have an effect ... The Republican Party has failed to understand to a significant degree the importance of this issue to our Hispanic voters. I think the trend will continue of lack of support from Hispanic voters and also as you look at the demographics of states like mine, that means we will go from Republican to Democrat over time. — John McCain

I should not have minded that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. — Charles Dickens

The President today once again took the opportunity to reiterate his old, failed national security strategies and present them to the American people as new, dynamic ideas intended to better protect the American people. — Ellen Tauscher

Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her - the opportunity, the courage. — Gustave Flaubert

America's 'social contract' is equal opportunity ... yet we have failed in achieving that seminal goal. — George Kaiser

One of the things that I love to do is travel around the world and look at archaeological sites. Because archaeology gives us an opportunity to study past civilizations, and see where they succeeded and where they failed. Use science to, you know, work backwards and say, 'Well, really, what were they thinking?' — Nathan Myhrvold

Elizabeth and Darcy laughed at the sight, and for a moment,
resolved to keep walking -- as the zombies had failed to take notice of them. But, sharing a glance and a smile, the pair realised they had stumbled onto their first opportunity to fight side by side. And so they did. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Certainly, if we believe in democracy and democratic systems, when [Benazir Bhutto] failed to pass any legislation, really, at all in her first two years in government during her first term and in fact had a tenure that was marked not only by gross corruption but by human rights abuses, that should have been a time for people to say, "Well, OK, we've given you an opportunity and you haven't bettered the institutions, you haven't strengthened the democratic cause - we may not vote you back." — Fatima Bhutto

There are times we will miss the opportunity to be empathic. Mental health professionals often call these "empathic failures." There are also times when the people around us will not be able to give us what we need. When this happens on occasion, most of our relationships can survive (and even thrive) if we work to repair the empathic failures. However, most relationships can't withstand repeated failed attempts at empathy. This is especially true if we find ourselves constantly rationalizing and justifying why we can't be empathic with someone or why someone is not offering us the empathy we need. — Brene Brown

How, in good conscience," Alessandro asked, "can you ride across the countryside in perfect safety, as if you were on holiday, stopping mainly to swim and eat oysters, while men are crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches?" "Because the object of war is peace, and I have merely thrown out the middle. If everyone did the same, no one would be crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches." "Everyone doesn't have the privilege. You do because you're a field marshal in command of a microscopic unit." "I realize that," Strassnitzky answered, "and, given such a rare opportunity, of which most men cannot even dream, I would be unforgivably remiss if I failed to seize it, would I not? I exploit it to the full. — Mark Helprin

He said, Contented? I am the MOST discontented man in the world! Don't you know I am the wealthiest man in the world? That is my discontent. Now I know there is no more to wealth: all that is possible I have attained, and yet I am dying empty. My life has been just a wastage. Next time, if God gives me another opportunity, I am not going to try money any more - it has failed. — Rajneesh

We know that productivity suffers when uncertainty is high. But we've failed to realize the equally destructive effects of too little anxiety ... By protecting people from risk, we destroy their self-esteem. We rob them of the opportunity to become strong, competent people. — Judith M Bardwick